Team Tips – 18 {A little cheese with that WHINE?}

Got a phone call from “me Mum” the other day. She was sad. The reality of having to finally put the family home up for sale had just hit her.

After telling me how she felt, she apologized to me for “whining”.

I was struck that at her 95 years of age, having dealt with WW2 in England, emigrating to Canada with a newborn (me), having no friends or family in this part of her world, etc., etc. that this was the first time I could recall her “whining” (as she put it).

It made me think of all the stuff I see in Twitter, and on Fussbook, and in the news where folks are continually, relentlessly, indiscriminately moaning and complaining and fussing and wailing about the latest pin prick in their lives. That's what I call WHINING!

And my reaction to all that stuff is: Ya want a little cheese with that whine?

Sure, there's lots one can complain about, and no shortage of bad news. The talking heads are paid to provide it, lay on the drama, get the audience worked up, introduce a little anxiety, move us to DefCon 3.

But seriously folks. How about a little perspective? A little dose of proportion? See - now I'm whining!!

We live in a world of abundance. In spite of all humanities mistakes we're still here on this amazing space ship. The sun appearing every day is cause for celebration.

And there are tools in the Core Protocols to recognize the problems and see what can be done with them (like Perfection Game.) Of course it's a lot easier to point out the concerns than to figure out a remedy or solution, and many times we would just rather complain.

That's also where the Core Commitments help too. For example:
 1. I commit to engage when present .... (b) To always seek effective help.
 3. I will use teams, especially when undertaking difficult tasks.
 4. I will speak always and only when I believe it will improve the general results/effort ratio.
 5. I will offer and accept only rational, results-oriented behavior and communication.
 8. I will seek to move forward toward a particular goal, by biasing my behavior toward action.

So - surprise, surprise - we CAN make choices. We can choose to complain, AND choose to do whatever we can about it.

And I figure if me Mum can get on with it, then I'd better too!

Software for Your Head 4

Finishing the project team kickoff meeting story from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

(from page 8):

Well, hell, if he did all that, you would consider him to be all the way checked in. Hmmm. What’s more, you think maybe, just maybe, that scenario might just do the trick for the whole damn team. Tell you what, you’d bet your bottom dollar that his teammates will at least respond with their fullest, focused attention. That’s just what people do whenever someone reveals himself a bit. If he’s talking and acting with just the least little bit of enlightenment, something new, they’re going to listen up and watch closely. As long as the person says what he says and does what he does with thoughtfulness and truth. But if it is true, you’d predict that the team, just by witnessing a more honest, genuinely new engagement level, will then be much more likely to act on questions of shared vision (which, you remind yourself, is the top-level symptom). At least, you figure, they’ll be more likely to act on things they care about, anyway, and that would be all to the good. Moreover, everybody who watched this thing unfold from just one person will have been really informed, and maybe even inspired, by the difference made by his acceptance of personal accountability for how he has been spending his own life. Really, not only for his own results, but for the results of all.

You half listen to the team struggling to cram everything in the agenda in the last few minutes. Maybe the others would also begin to experiment with the new power they are seeing and feeling (and there is tremendous power in accepting individual responsibility for achieving results together). If your guidance would help one or more of them to engage more deeply, and not to waste any time and never to do anything dumb on purpose, why, you’d have made a huge difference. Hell, the dumb quota can always be met by doing things you thought were smart to begin with. You don’t have to do anything dumb on purpose to meet the quota.

You imagine that a newly awakened team member would see a whole bunch of things, maybe all at once; the problem is not a case of a team without a shared vision, a case of just another stupid project, or another example of bad management or poor leadership. No, when he thinks it all the way through, he’ll see that the trouble is not “too few people,” or “not enough time,” or some other cockamamie story about how the mediocrity was out of his control. The crux of the thing is that he, personally, has been accepting less than he wants, and less than he deserves. What’s more, he has been doing so without making any genuine creative effort to get what he requires to efficiently create what he wants. He’ll see that the problem is his own lack of integrity and his shallow engagement. The problem is rooted somewhere near his deficient caring about his own life. To persist as it has, the problem requires his repression of passion, it mandates that he fail to accept his own wisdom, and it seduces him into daily acts of cowardice that promulgate rather than abolish the general foolishness of which he is such an important part.

But should just this one person truly check in, you think, the whole team will be moved to a better ground. Even if team members backslide, and all do,they won’t forget this vivid instance of accountable behavior and the simple, unambiguous actions that supported it.

One self-respecting person, you reflect, with even a modest degree of personal engagement, is all it takes to start this team on the path toward much greater achievement. No permission is required for the pursuit of greatness, no consensus to improve your own results. All the orgs and re-orgs in the whole damn corporate universe, all the resources consumed and processes proceeding can’t stop one honest person from making sure he spends his time wisely. And that’s all that is needed to get the ball rolling.

Why not believe, you think. Pretend. OK. So from this one moment of surpassing individual and dawning team clarity, this whole group will quicken, will revive. Of course, team members will need some new supportive structures; they’ll require whatever information there is about highly effective connection and collaboration. In particular, they’ll damn well want more moments of clarity, and will be willing to adopt whatever practices create just the right conditions for genuine checking in.

They can’t hold it, probably. And would they spread it around? You have a spike of unease, but then you reassure yourself that the team you are envisioning would of course look for any behavior patterns that would achieve its goals. If there weren’t any, team members would just figure a way to create them. And put them in a book.

But first, one of them must check all the way in. Just one. Who? All this, after one of them has decided that his life, time, and creative output really do matter. But not before.

Interrupting your reverie, your nascent vision, the meeting suddenly stops as people scatter and depart, ceasing to meet rather than finishing their work. Finishing is way different from ceasing, you muse. As you gather yourself, one of the team newbies, together with the team’s most infamous cynic, approach you. You bet they want your take on things. Your help.

So that's the kickoff meeting that we've all been to, and all have wished was better.

What have you done in this situation? Thoughts? Comments?

Software for Your Head 2

Continuing with the stereotypical project team kickoff meeting from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

We left off (from page 5) with:

My, but you’re feeling anthropological today, aren’t you? Is it maybe the presence of the cynics nee idealists? Does it touch you somehow?

Whatever. The scarcity of vision does strike you as interesting, even though it’s not a major topic of conversation (or even a minor one, for that matter). You know that most of these team members would agree that “shared vision” is a vital thing for a team. Why, if you went around the room and asked who was for and who against a shared vision, almost all would vote for it. Some would hedge or go technical on you (define this, what do you mean by that, it depends). But none would vote no. And yet, despite this general conviction, no one seems committed to a particular shared vision, or attempts to achieve one on this team. Of course, catching a shared vision, that’s a tough problem. Who knows where lightning will strike? Who has mapped the rainbow’s end? You note that there are a few who absolutely believe that a shared vision is the vital ingredient for a successful team. Still, no one speaks up about this obvious vacancy.

Instead,while you drift in and out, they plod on through the usual meeting follies, cracking a few minor jokes, interrupting without reason, talking overlong and repetitively, sporadically fighting for control, while somehow meandering through a poorly conceived and prematurely written agenda. Yet all the while the people on this team are somehow numbing themselves to a frightening lack of vision of where it is they are going. You wonder, why doesn’t anyone speak up? Don’t they care? You are willing to bet dollars to dog biscuits that plenty of perfectly good beliefs and values are lying dormant within the members of this team—beliefs and values that would make all the difference, if only they were put into practice.

But, because you are acting as a kind of mentor or coach, and are really troubled by this curious vision oblivion, you decide that the obvious first step is to get them going on a shared vision.

This would help. Short-term, anyway. Now that you’ve decided how to help, you can barely restrain yourself from saying something that might awaken their somnolent vision-building potential. But you say nothing now, and not only because of the difficulty of fighting the others for precious airtime, and of suborning the agenda, but because you intuit that jumping in with that straightforward and inarguable direction (get a vision, people!) might be a long-term mistake. You are having a growing belief that there just may be bigger, tastier fish for you to fry here. No sense settling for little crappies, you think, when some big ole lunker bass might be about.

You are increasing your degree of presence.

The problem, you think, is not merely that they ought to acquire a shared vision. Clearly, they need one, and they aren’t about to get one, not with their present behavior, anyway. And yet, your intuition whispers that the lack of a shared vision is not the most important issue to address. So, trying that on, you think some more. What was that about fish to fry? Teach a man to fish, etc. Yes, that’s it.

You know that some of these team members do believe in having a common purpose. You know the whole team would really catch fire if team members just had this one big, energizing, lightning-striking, all-solving vision! But here, on this team, almost unbelievably, not one person will even say anything about this AWOL vision.

You wonder why would they lie and betray their beliefs. A little more of your dwindling supply of innocence goes poof. There must be some explanation.Maybe the lack of shared vision is the symptom here, not the problem. The problem with this team is that not one damned person on it is speaking the truth. They don’t really lie, not much; they just focus on the smaller stuff, because the bigger stuff is too scary. So they don’t tell the truth. Not all of it, anyway. Hell, not even the pieces of it they have.

So now what?

Continues soon. Sound familiar? Please comment.